a speech

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 09:46:32PM -0400, dan at geer.org wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the note and the compliment.
> 
> I took Kelly Ziegler at her word (*) given that her role as an executive
> at NERC (Northamerican Electric Reliability Corporation).
> 
> --dan
> 
> (*)
> https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity10/grid-phd-smart-grid-cyber-security-and-future-keeping-lights
> 

I would advise any cypherpunk that wants to keep their lights on to invest 
in a 48VDC system with (partial) battery backup. If your solar installer starts
blathering about AC and inverters and batteries costing too much, get a new
installer, or help me build some open-source hardware grid-tie inverters.

If you have a say 5KW system, installers will try to sell you batteries to
back up the entire 5kw. You only need a few hundred watts (and maybe 1
kilowatt-hour) of batteries. If you do it this way, it will cost less than
buying electricity for the next 30 years. 

If there is a high-profile hack of some power grid device and utilities have
to do a 'truck roll' to patch some magic utility box, then your solar payback
time will probably drop to 5 years because you have to pay for the utilities
insecurity.